


Waking Up

by Vadadaca



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: And also kind of a shitty boyfriend, Carlos is awkward, I don't know what else to tag this with that doesn't completey give away the entire story, It's About Damn Time, M/M, My First Work in This Fandom, cecil's relationship history, so I guess I'll just stop now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 22:16:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vadadaca/pseuds/Vadadaca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil reflects on how his mornings went in each of his past relationships. And, of course, how his mornings go with Carlos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking Up

**Author's Note:**

> Not proofread or edited too much. I'm trying to get back into the habit of writing, and, you know, Night Vale is awesome, so.
> 
> CC very welcome! I also don't know what I'm doing posting on here for the first time, so let me know if I've formatted wrong or God knows what else.

Waking up with Steve had always been warm, safe. His parents didn't care that Cecil spent the night, and even better they didn't bother the boys, barging in on them wrapped up in each other in a heap of teenage hormones and first love. Most of the time Cecil woke up first to find Steve nestled against his chest, an arm looped around his waist and a face like he could find no greater bliss in the world. Cecil would run his fingers through his hair, or on more daring mornings slip a hand lower and trace the boy's jutting hipbone, and Steve would come to in stages. His forehead would crease in the tiniest wrinkle, his lips would fold in on themselves for a moment, his lashes would flutter like a ripple forming on the surface of still water, and finally dark eyes would find Cecil's face and an uncontrollable smile would quirk Steve lips. 

And then, because they were seventeen-year-old boys, they would usually go at it like wildcats in heat.

\-- 

Cecil never woke up before Earl. He always shivered awake to a half-empty bed, but it was hard to complain when his nostrils were immediately flooded with the smells of sausages and Belgian waffles, or blueberry pancakes and turkey bacon, or poached eggs and multigrain toast. Even now when Cecil (only very occasionally) curses the ban on wheat and wheat by-products, it is the remembered scents of Earl Harlan's breakfasts that tempt him back into disloyal citizenship. 

Cecil typically found himself in the kitchen before he remembered getting out of bed, but that was as much to do with the six-dimensional layout of Earl's apartment as it was to do with the smell of breakfast wafting across the apartment. Either way, Cecil was soon wrapped in Earl's wiry-haired arms being kissed sweetly good morning as his mouth watered and his face flushed (this was usually the point at which Cecil's brain woke up enough to realize that he was wearing nothing but the bottom half of his thermal underwear and a night cap). Earl would  then guide Cecil to a seat at the kitchen table for him to overcome his embarrassment while Earl served them both up hearty breakfasts and gazed lovingly across the table at him.

 --

In Svitz, of course, Cecil only awoke rolling down a hill. Sometimes he had a moment before that, of his traveling companion bumping into him before they both began to roll. Cecil often began laughing before he even realized he was awake. Both of them did, by the end of his stay in Svitz. They were young, and oddly energized by the lack of daytime in the foreign country, and not so much in love as mutually thrilled by the idea of traveling with a near-stranger while sharing secretive glances and furtive smiles. 

When they actually were getting up for the day (or night, as it were) of activities and exploration, they would simply turn their rolling into a light jog and set their course for the nearest all-night diner. There were surprisingly few of these, considering the perpetual darkness of the country, but neither of them ever complained. They simply grew very accustomed to sharing convenience store quail-on-a-stick or rutabaga custard with pretzel dipping sticks. They even managed to have a few of these meals across tea lights bought at the Svitzian equivalent of a dollar store (the currency of the land was both impossible to pronounce and printed with images of unknowable creatures, so Cecil found it best not to dwell on this). Inevitably, after a few of these intimate meals, the candles began sliding, then rolling down the hills and caused a forest fire that lasted for several weeks and caused Cecil and his traveling partner to wake up surrounded by flames. Once, just before it was finally extinguished by a huldra that was passing through town, Cecil woke up with his hair on fire. Even then, though, it was always with laughter and merriment and the breathless joy of a summer of travel and romance.

\-- 

Cecil blinked awake, a rogue beam of light finding a gap through Carlos' curtains and hitting him directly in his left eye. Cecil winced and turned toward his--Cecil's heart fluttered-- _boyfriend_ , and, as always, his breath was taken away (though not in the literal, Radon Canyon way) by the sight of him.

The left side of Carlos' face had a thin, white crust of dried drool spread across most of it. It ended up like this any time he stayed up late waiting for Cecil to come home before passing out to sleep like the dead. On the same side, his hair was completely flat, matted by grease and six hours of applied weight. Cecil had to extract his arm gently from under Carlos, where it had somehow become pinned during the night rendering it now completely numb. Cecil decided this only meant that he had to use his other hand to stroke Carlos' cheek, and perhaps tuck a lock of perfect hair back behind his ear. He didn't get any farther than a well-defined jawline, though, when Carlos jerked and flailed awake. 

Literally.

Cecil twitched back too late, Carlos' wrist catching his neck in a painful and awkward collision for both of them. It took Carlos a minute to make sense of the room and the wheezing noise coming from the blurry blob in front of him, but after a frantic scrambling for his glasses he was wide-eyed and panicking and profusely apologizing. Mind you, this _did_ happen every morning they woke up together, so after a while the apologizing portion became a bit formulaic and little more than a formality.

"It's only," Carlos said after Cecil waved off his apologies for the morning, "I'm not really sure why you keep trying to wake me up like that. Maybe a gentle shoulder shake from arms-length might be safer? Or just saying my name from across the room maybe?" 

Cecil chuckled (a bit hoarsely) and shook his head and said "Oh, Carlos," in the same way he did when his boyfriend asked him about  the lion meat content of the public school's lunch menu.

"I'm really sorry," Carlos said again, because he didn't know what else to do and felt waves of guilt crashing over him like tsunamis every second that Cecil smiled at him like that. Cecil only shook his head and kissed Carlos on the forehead. 

"I'll just go make some tea and I'll be fine, my darling Carlos."

It took until Cecil had been out of the room a solid ten seconds for Carlos to start and realize that the kind of thing that a good boyfriend would do would be to offer to make the tea for him. He scrambled after Cecil to make the offer, wondering if it was too late, if he looked like a completely insensitive jerk, if Cecil would be mentioning his name alongside Steve Carlsberg in his next broadcast. 

In the kitchen, Cecil removed the night's accumulation of peonies and children's letters to Cthulhu  from the bottom of the kettle and started boiling water, thinking to himself that he had never had a morning so perfect in his life.


End file.
